In this week’s podcast, in light of Industry analyst firm Superdata’s report on the digital games market for October, showing a 7% year-on-year increase to $5.5 billion in global spend, the Sparks discuss what life would be like if gamers had a digital only future imposed upon them with games costing more than they did in store and ask, would there be a mass migration to the PC and its more reasonably priced online services such as Steam, Origin and GOG? Would the sting of high cost digital games on console make the initial larger financial outlay for a gaming rig worth it?
With all the PlayStation games that are now coming to PC, is it time for Sony to release a dedicated PC launcher?
Unless they are trying to kill their recently created PC business, I would advise against opening a dedicated PC store. It's an extremely hard endeavor, and people, in general, are very comfortable with Steam. Even Epic, with their billions of dollars invested, is still struggling to find a foothold, and they have Fortnite.
Money is one thing security is another but again millions have 0 knowledge past 2020.
Epic store for years struggled with a shopping cart/account theft/credit card theft
Rockstar launcher/store to this day over 5 years later still has horrific user interface security flaws lost account's and stolen CC
Then you got that activision need phone number oh we lost it launcher
The crown jewel is the ea launcher/store ea app 3 yrs old still has hundreds of threads were people lost games/accounts/game access or just straight up crashes.
Edit" Oh ubi launcher were you buy a game that may or may not be there again or work and the launcher 5yrs old still has no 4K support if you launch it on a 4k screen there is a high chance it will just crash.
Can tell who ever put this together is not all that clued up on pc gaming.
It's just a known fact. The PC gaming community prefer Steam and Steam alone. They don't like different launchers. I personally don't mind them. But majority just stick with steam. Hence why EA and Ubisoft went back to on releasing on steam and why Microsoft release games on steam as people hated buying from the windows store.
The only other launchers that I imagine are doing ok is GOG due to being drm free and epic games due to the free games every week. Sony shouldn't release any sort of pc launcher n
It literally says in the OP that PC gamers don't like multiple launchers lol. It even mentions Steam being the go to for gamers
Title: "PlayStation Doesn't Need a Dedicated PC Store Launcher"
N4G: "Can tell who ever put this together is not all that clued up on pc gaming"
When you don't even read the headline...
I read it and had a brain fart. As read the title then this "With all the PlayStation games that are now coming to PC, is it time for Sony to release a dedicated PC launcher?"
So I hold my hands up on that mistake. Rest of my comment still stands.
Steam and GOG are highly preferred because of the rich feature set. Ubisoft, Rockstar, EA, Epic etc have all set a precedent over the years for customers to instinctively expect individual publisher launchers to be so extremely half-assed that the majority simply don't want to bother dealing with what is almost an inevitable disappointment by comparison to Steam or GOG. Those publishers and their inaction or general disinterest to improve have effectively ruined any future adoption to be taken seriously.
This is just another ridiculous double standard article.
It's like how Microsoft can spend 20 years of making nothing but gaas and live service style games to sell microtransactions, dlc and subscriptions and get praise for doing it, but if Sony wants to make a single game like that every website under the sun is writing articles saying how Sony is anti-consumer or whatever.
Yep, huge double standard look at the tortured reaction to the ps5pro, websites hyperventilating like Sony is forcing people to buy it.
Wait my xbox from 2004 has avengers gaas on it? wow your so smart
m$ Gaas started with the other companies like sony
Gamepass yes they are deep into that but its still a huge money saver sense you do not own your games then get a service like that.
Now there pc xbox launcher that is trash for years now
"Driver was a technical achievement for PS1, a pioneer in cinematic gaming, and an often brutal challenge - TechStomper asks if its brand of 70s car chase antics still holds up."
@Shane Kim
Well, I mean the driving physics hold up. The draw distance, police AI, visuals in general etc do not
One of my all time favorites on PS1. I spent a summer vacation playing this was so good
Sadly youd be hard pressed to find any driving game with better physics these days. But the draw distance really kills it for me
The physics hold up ridiculously well. And the draw distance is a real hurdle at first.
Nonsense. The physics in any modern game or any 360 game is light years beyond Driver.
My thoughts exactly. I bought it at release for full price and got frustrated and bored with it very quickly.
Gran Turismo for PlayStation launched a sub-genre and revolutionised console racing - TechStomper asks is it still worth playing in 2024.
Something we really miss, just turning on the console and having the game start without signing into stuff
@Terry_B I miss having people to splitscreen with, but I can't blame anyone for that :-(
@Terry_B
GT7 actually has 4 player splitscreen. Which is wild in this day and age.
Good news is that Sony released a final update to Gran Turismo Sport to allow it to function offline. Expecting the same for GT7 at some point in the future.
I'm not big into sim racing, but I got sucked into the hype for this one from magazines back then. I just played arcade mode and that was enough for me to feel like I got my money's worth.
Yeah, it's definitely worth playing today. GT 2 has a few interesting fan made graphical mods when played on an emulator as well.
The arcade mode is underrated, it's a great alternative mode and you can even unlock GT HiFi with it.
Cars back then had much more personality then those we see today. Modern cars all about the led lights and the tablet size screens and they all seem alike, back then they could be simpler in design but had tons more personality.
That is something a few people have pointed out - that cars all look the same now. I have to agree that a lot of new vehicles lack personality.
You guys are so anti-fun its depressing, like who tf cares about personality of objects like wtf? Just learn to enjoy stuff as is.
It's hardly anti-fun to remark that some objects look nicer than others.
And everyone has their favourite era of cars, I sincerely doubt many will pick the 2020s a few decades from now.
Dude, like wft cares about personality of objects? What about art? Paintings are objects and they're considered good or bad if they show or lack personality so I ask, wtf are you talking about? Cars are also considered pieces of art, vintage cars, classic cars, classic bikes and so on. Artists are appreciated by the objects they craft, blacksmiths, painters, engineers, designers, so wtf cares about personality of objects indeed... ( Sorry for my English, it's not my native language)
That Corvette Stingray to this day is one of the most ferocious whips ever driven. Overpowered against other cars yes. But to drive it and be that close to losing control, but being in command around those curves, just can't be duplicated.
HiFi mode is also something I miss. There should be a mode in today's GT where it's Mano o Mano and the detail and resolution jump full throttle. In today's games, Max Ray Tracing and lighting and textures to make it look even more real..
A modern HiFi mode would be really cool! It would be really interesting to see how real they could go by stripping it all way back.
And Stingray is a solid choice 👌
HiFi mode in GT1 was only a stripped down 60 fps mode for one track. Should have been called "Performance Mode" or "High Frame Rate" mode.
Not according to Former Playstation president Jim Ryan for he told Time that he doesn't see why anyone would play old games given the advancements in fidelity achieved today.
https://time.com/4804768/pl...
probably not, id still stick to my consoles. It just means I'll buy less games, I already do that as not all are worth playing.
the price between digital titles and retail, along with no resale value is the main stumbling block for me.
example, battlefront is £55 to download of £39 to buy the disc,
My opinion is that digital sales should be 15-25% lower than retail on new games. I truly believe that the next iteration of consoles will not have optical drives and everything will be digital. There will be those who resist, but the market is leaning towards it more and more. I myself prefer digital, but there are those who will reject the idea and get out of console gaming...which would be ironic since Steam and Origin do so well. The main problem is always going to be storage. I see prices of external drives coming down rather quickly and maybe, just maybe instead of optical, we will have games on USB style cartridges like the 3dsxl..time will tell
If it was digital only, console game prices would plummet to compete with PC so No.
Digital prices on consoles are high to appease retail.
The gaming companies don't want to go digital because it will give "you" a better price. As soon as it goes all digital and the companies no longer have to compete with resale they will have complete control of the price and it won't benefit you the consumer.